A 44-stone teenager has eaten himself to death at a £15,000-a-month Swiss care home where he was being treated for his compulsive eating.
The 17-year-old identified only as Fabian M had been sent for treatment after his weight ballooned due to a secret diet of takeaways.
He was waiting for gastric band surgery in the home in Winterthur, Switzerland, but he still managed to get pizzas, chicken nuggets and burgers delivered to the clinic’s front door.
Police found him sprawled on the floor in his room and investigators believe he may have suffocated under his own body weight having continuously flouted the rules on his diet.
Fabian M was waiting for gastric band surgery in the home in Winterthur, Switzerland, but he still managed to get pizzas, chicken nuggets and burgers delivered to the clinic’s front door (file image)
Officials are still investigating the cause of his death, but many believe he died after falling from a chair.
His extreme weight, it is reported, would have made it impossible for the teenager to get upright unaided.
Fabian M continued to pile on the pounds in the home, where he was meant to be shedding weight, due to takeaways he was ordering in.
Swiss Obesity Foundation president Heinrich von Grunigen said: ‘I have never seen a case with such serious consequences.’
‘If the addiction is well advanced, one must forcefully prevent the person concerned from getting food.’
The 17-year-old identified only as Fabian M had been sent for treatment after his weight ballooned due to a secret diet of takeaways (file image)
In an interview with 20 Minuten, the boy’s sister Dajena M said his eating disorder started as a child.
When his mother went to work Fabian would miss her and cry all day, making himself ill, and needing calories to build his strength back up.
He started getting bullied in nursery where the over-eating problem escalated.
Dajena said she and her family tried multiple times to help her brother by emptying the fridge and clearing food from the house and the teenager even regularly locked himself in a room to avoid the temptation of snacking.
Eventually Fabian was taken away for professional help, but the family do not believe he received the right treatment because he was ‘constantly being punished’.
The last time the family saw the teenager, he told his mother he was dying, but they claim nurses did not want to call an ambulance.
Dajena told 20 Minuten: ‘Those responsible must be held accountable. He should never die so young, because the authorities fail.’